Makers of Modern MedicineWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Makers of Modern Medicine
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Medicine -- Biography
"In the faculty there were Dieffenbach, the foremost surgeon of his
day; Schoenlein, the great physician who had come from Zurich the
same year to join, not only the teaching body, but to act as a
reporting counsellor for the ministry and to serve as
physician-in-ordinary to the King; Froriep, who was in charge of the
Pathological Institute; Caspar, who {220} was also medical
counsellor, with a seat in the special deputation for medical
affairs in the ministry; but towering above them all was the
intellectual figure of Johann Müller, the Professor of Physiology.
He was an original genius with daring, actually engaged in winnowing
the wheat of demonstrated truth from the prevailing chaff of
egoistic opinion which divorced physical science from speculative
philosophy. Prompted by the inspiration which he had derived in turn
from Bichat and the French school, the Professor of Physiology was
busily retesting in the laboratory truths previously elaborated by
Haller, Whytt, Spalanzani, Cullen, Prochaska, John Hunter, the
Bells, Magendie, Berzelius and Bichat himself."
This is the tribute to Johann Müller, nearly fifty years after his
death. That of Virchow, at his obsequies in Berlin, is even more
enthusiastic. Virchow, then at the age of thirty-seven, at the height
of his powers, already acknowledged the greatest of living
pathologists, just recalled to Berlin to become Professor of Pathology
in the University which he had left more or less in disgrace because
of his political opinions, could not say too much of the teacher whom
he respected and honored so highly and whose inspiration he felt stood
for so much in his own career.
He said:
"My feeble powers have been invoked to honor this great man whom we
all, representatives of the great medical family, teachers and
taught, practitioners and investigators, mutually lament and whose
memory is still so vividly with us. Neither cares by day nor labors
by night can efface from our mind the sorrow which we feel for his
loss. If the will made the deed, how gladly would I attempt the
hopeless task of proper appreciation. Few have been privileged, like
myself, to have this great master beside them in every stage of
development. It was his hand which guided {221} my first steps as a
medical student. His words proclaimed my doctorate and from that
spot, whence now his cold image looks down upon us, his kindly eyes
beamed warmly upon me, as I delivered my first public lecture as
Privat-Docent under his deanship. And, in after years, I was the one
out of the large number of his pupils who, by his own choice, was
selected to sit beside him within the narrow circle of the faculty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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